About us

Our story

Better Business World Wide are proud to be the company that once defined the criteria for mystery shopping in the Nordics and Europe. We have succeeded in running projects in more than 55 countries and reporting this live in a multitude of languages. We work together with clients from different industries but who are joined together in their aim: To measure, develop and improve their services and level of quality.

Veronica Boxberg Karlsson founded the company in 1995 and was initially all alone in working with mystery shopping, market surveys, quality development-programs, service training and market communications.

Along came a hotel brand that assigned her the mission of trialling their units in Sweden, as a mystery shopper. After having stayed the night in all of their 55 hotels in Sweden, they now wanted the same mystery-shopping program in Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Belgium and Holland. As they eventually wanted visits to be made in all 7 countries simultaneously, Veronica had to bring in some co-workers. The HQ was an office in her own home and staff meetings were held around the kitchen table.

Eventually the amount of assignments increased, especially in retail, making the costs for the foreign trips both time consuming and expensive. Better Business started to map how other international companies ran their business. This gave way for the move to new offices in Vallentuna in 1999 and the start-up of the register of employees (indexing local shoppers throughout the Nordics) and the development of the first version for live-feed reporting online. However, the trip from the kitchen table to boardrooms had just started.

Better Business have developed a range of concepts where a pick would be SSQ-Award, Scandinavian Service & Quality Award, Superb Service Award, Tourist-in-Europe and The Smiling Report.

Veronica is also the author of many books used by students, clients and mystery shopping companies’ world wide. She is the author of “The book about Mystery Shopping”, “Measuring Management in the Moment of Truth”, “Så får du personalen att vilja företagets bästa” (“How to make the staff want what’s best for the company?”) and finally the only book written with the aim to guide the employees who are partaking in a mystery shopping program – “The employee’s guide to Mystery Shopping.”
In 1999, Better Business became members of the MSPA, the trade association for mystery shopping. In 2001, Veronica founded the European branch and sat in as president during the first 3 years and is since 2006 a member of the MSPA Global Board. The IMSA (International Mystery Shopping Alliance) was co-founded by Veronica in 2003 compiling over 500.000 mystery shoppers worldwide. In 2008, Better Business was appointed as the years Gaselle-company, marking it as one of the fastest growing companies in Sweden.

Today, the offices in Vallentuna have 20+ employees and the company have had over 60 000 mystery shoppers in their ledgers, all registered and waiting for their next assignment.

Better Business is a 100% Swedish company owned at 100% by the Karlsson family. Better Business have franchises in Iceland and are in close cooperation with the best companies in the industry when accepting international contracts.